1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic toy having a game function. More specifically, the present invention relates to an electronic toy for playing, at a time, one of several possible games and includes a display comprising a digital displaying portion for displaying digital information and a figure displaying portion for displaying a game when a game is being played by displaying a figure or figure symbols for a game.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Heretofore, a timepiece apparatus having a digital display for displaying the current time information in a digital manner has been proposed and put into practical use. Such conventional digital display type timepieces may be incorporated in a clock, a wristwatch and so on; however, such conventional timepieces with a digital display were merely adapted to display the current time information such as the day of a month, the day of a week, the hour, the minute, the second and so on. Accordingly, such conventional timepieces of a digital display type fail to have other functions such as a game function.
It is also known from U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,188,779 (Fatton) and 4,231,090 (Fatton) to incorporate a game function into an electronic timepiece. The invention claimed herein is not concerned with such a combination.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,337,218 (Hurley) and 3,583,538 (Hurley) disclose electronic games in which a player causes the movement of a game object such as a dart, horseshoe, or ping-pong ball. The movement of the game object can be influenced by a player, but these Hurley references do not teach changing the movement of the game object in a manner unknown to or not easily predictable by a player with reference to predetermined positional relationships between player controlled and apparatus controlled symbols.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,249,734 (Bromley) discloses a hand-held electronic football game in which the defensive players may be controlled by a person or in a pseudo-random manner by an operational control circuit in the game. The above remarks regarding the invention also apply to Bromley, and with regard to U.S. Pat. No. 4,162,792 (Chang et al), wherein a game piece operated by a player must try to avoid randomly generated obstacles.